DIY Bench Pad

I LOVE DIY projects. I never actually find the time to do them. But I have a few closets in this house cram packed with DIY ideas, and supplies. I think I may have two actual things that I've actually done. The lamps in my bedroom. And now this.

The hubs and I bought new bedroom furniture a while ago. We were rockin' out the furniture he had when he was a teen and still living with is parents. The furniture was great quality, but it was super dated. It was too 80's to pull vintage, and too newborn vintage to pull retro. So, into the garage is sleeps. Waiting. For someone. With a creative eye maybe. I'm not going to talk it down too much, one day I'll be selling it and one of you may want it, but change your mind after reading this.. Its unlikely BUT with my luck. Maybe so.

Anyway- So this isn't a DIY blog, otherwise you'd get an update twice a year. ANND I'm not good with measurements. When I make things, I eye ball them. Patterns are hard for me to follow. I did however, measure the top of my trunk to see what size wood I needed. Then off to Lowes to go find some thin plywood. I bought this piece for about $6.00 and they cut it to size for free.
The foam roll was about $19 at Hobby Lobby but I had a 40%off coupon. I found the pre-packaged roll to be cheaper than the stuff they cut for you. I didn't end up using all of it, so I do have some left over to take up more room in my closet to use for another project.

Being the safety conscious person that I am, I used my living room coffee table as my work table. If your wondering about my fabric choice- Before we bought our new furniture the colors in our room were brown and blue. I bought a brown comforter and blue curtains not too long ago so I hated the though of having to get rid of them and starting over. With the new stark white furniture I bought a bright red chair and ottoman for a pop of color. It's really nice. But it came together better in my head. So now I had to search for something to tie these all together. Impossible.. I think not!

I started by laying the wood on top of the padding. Then leaving about 5-6 inches of padding on each side. I stapled the padding to the wood. The staple size will vary depending on the thickness of your padding. If you'd like to know what size I used let me know and I'll find out. I do know that you want to make sure that the staple does not come out completely on the other side. Otherwise, it could make for some painful sittin'.

After the padding was good and stapled on (you'll probably have to trim around the corners so that it doesn't get too thick. I did the corners last.) I laid the board on top of the fabric being mindful of where i wanted the birds on the top of the cushion. I cut the fabric to the size I needed. I probably over-did it but I didn't want to end up falling short!
As with the padding, I stapled the fabric on leaving the corners for last. Once I got to the corners I pulled them pretty tight but not so tight that it cause too many ripples and stapled the life out of them. At this point I was glad that I left extra fabric because I could pull the fabric to the actual board and staple it on that way. It just got too thick to hold a staple around the padded corners. You could probably also switch out for a bigger staple but I only had the one size.

Pardon the mess, I had to do something to keep the kids busy. And on a side note, stapling into padding sounds a lot like what one might think gun shots sound like. Glad to know that after 20+ gunshots were fired.. No neighbors called to complain.. and/or alert the police.

Tah Dah!


Ben give it his "Comfy" seal of approval.